Britannia, NY

Gary is wearing what almost maybe passes for a suit--at least, he's wearing a clean button-down for once, and a threadbare suitjacket over it, although he's still in jeans. He didn't invite Mike along for this (not being, frankly, totally insane, we mean, really).

He's a little afraid to meet his mother, although he's not quite sure why. She wasn't threatening last time. There's nothing inherently wrong with this invitation.

Still, he can't quite shake the feeling of foreboding that's settling over him now.

Some time after vacation, the rest of the summer slipped into a blur of relentless work and lost sleep. Cecilia had been to several conferences, was putting in extra hours, and trying to gear everything up for back-to-school. (The last, a hopeless pile of things she couldn't quite get caught up with. Thank god for helpful library pages, at least.)

She's been distracted, keeping to herself more than usual. She doesn't sleep well, but she doesn't really mind that so much. She's been reading the stories of her life, the way other people set them down, and none of it seems to match up with what she remembers or knows. It's painful.

Today, she's finishing up a pile of work in her little corner of the back office. It's supposed to be her day off, but she's been coming in nearly every day anyway. Cecilia feels a bit frazzled, though it probably doesn't show. She's about to head out and grab a cup of coffee and a break.

Summer for Cecilia doesn't mean that work slows down -- if anything, it means the library has more patrons on its hands than usual. Which means more desk-time for Cecilia, and later evening shifts while she works to catch up on whatever she can't do from the reference desk. This suits her just fine, for a few weeks anyway, since it means she has less time on her hands to sit idle and brood over her thoughts.

The dreams haven't let up. In the past, she might have sought out Arthur, to check on him, or as some means of comfort for herself, but the last few weeks she's kept to herself. She hasn't even really mentioned it to Larry in their phone conversations. Something in Morgause wants to keep secrets, and Cecilia is finding it increasingly difficult to fight that impulse.

She dreams of her brother, and a kind of angry longing sweeps over her and ruins her whole day. Or she wakes with the sense of all the things she could never have, the sense of being half-exiled to Orkney. The best case scenario is dreaming of her own death -- she never thought she'd find cold resignation to be the preferable outcome.

Eventually, she makes up her mind that it's time to get out of town for a bit. So she arranges vacation time, and calls up Larry to see where she might catch him. Then she heads into town to run errands, doing her best to look open and approachable.

Ever since Larry's late-night call, Cecilia's been arguing with herself about what to do, and who to talk to. She doesn't have anything concrete to tell anyone -- just Larry's vague sense of worry and her own insistent, unclear dreams.

Still, she feels she ought to check in with Arthur, not least because she promised Larry she would. So this evening she's out and about, running errands, and oh-so-coincidentally taking a leisurely walk past Arthur's apartment building.

It's 3 in the morning. He dimly knows this, but this is important and he's afraid he's going to lose it. It's like a song he needs to write down before the melody goes out of his head. He doesn't know what he's going to say, not exactly. He just knows he needs to talk to Cecilia. Right away.

What will scare Larry later, when he remembers this, is the blurring between his old self and his new one. And he's not sure which of them initiated the phone call.

Spring is coming, truly now, and Cecilia finds her mood improving. Warmer weather is always welcome, and soon enough things will cease to be terminally grey and bland. And it's not just the weather; things have gotten a little easier since she managed to tell Larry exactly how she felt, and though she misses him now, she's content.

Her dreams are still heart-twisting, still waking her up at strange hours, and some days she feels more like Morgause caught up in the wrong time then she feels like herself. But by and large, she goes to work, and helps out patrons, and takes long walks after her shift is over, and tries not to dwell on it.

Most days, she succeeds. But today is not one of those days. Today started out all right, and her workday went by quickly. Now, though, she doesn't want to go home and so she's walking down the main drag, without her jacket, trying to decide between a cocktail or coffee.

She has spent the weekend at home, with Larry. It was good to be together, for more reasons than one, though she supposed it was a bit of a mixed bag. Still, the weekend had done little to ease her anger; had done little more than give it time to cool into Morgause's hard resolve.

The morning after Larry leaves, Cecilia puts herself together carefully. She takes her time, weighs her need to exert her control against the risk that is obviously present. She's gone easy, with Gaheris, up to now. She's preferred to treat him gently, as Cecilia would. But there are limits, boundaries, and he has unquestionably crossed a line.

It's no great thing to get herself let into the building, and from there to suss out which apartment is Gary & Mike's. It's Tuesday morning, fairly early, and Mike should be out.

Her knock is not one you'd use for a friendly drop-by. It's short, and sharp. Authoritative.

Larry feels oddly like he's playing hooky. Granted, he got permission to take a long weekend off, and further granted, he's just finished a recording session and he won't start touring for another few weeks. But as busy as his agent's kept him, even if he hadn't gotten permission, he might have run off for a few days anyway.

This, though, is what he wanted. A record with decent distribution. Some radio play. A tour. No more day job. Easy enough to romanticize picking up and going at the drop of a hat, but harder to romanticize the menial series of jobs he worked to pay the rent in the meantime.

He tells himself he's happy.

Of course, he hadn't meant to come back to Britannia. Not really. He missed Cecilia, missed... whatever they were, he'd admit that much, but something about the place made him uneasy.

It's only for a weekend.

He walks from the bus station, guitar over one shoulder and small duffel in one hand. He's heading towards Cecilia's house, but taking his time. It's just a town. Nothing that should set his teeth on edge. Beside which, the sun is out and it's a nice break from the city.

Of course.

Gary needs a good consult, and it's with that object in mind that he shows up at the library Monday afternoon, hands in the pockets of his jacket, his cheek in that stubbly phase which indicates he's spent the last few days in his studio focused on his painting and not particularly on the outside world.

His weight is in constant flux with his level of stress, and he's running towards thin again, his face hollow.

( ..through the long night.. )

//

Cecilia wakes and feels like you do when a fever has just broken. Her pulse is racing, and for some reason she is weeping, and the blade swims at the edge of her consciousness in a way that makes her nauseous.

By the time the sun is starting to come up, she's showered and dressed, and called in sick to work. She leaves the house and steps into the late February chill with her coat open and no hat. She walks, at a brisk pace, across town. She's heading for Arthur's apartment building, and half-hoping no one sees her walking there.

Elaine is taking Gary's advice. If for no other reason than she can feel something building; she can feel her other self getting impatient, and (if she's honest with herself) getting stronger.

So she heads to the library on her next day off. It can't hurt to ask, at least.

Because if Elaine's sure of anything, it's that something is going to change, and soon.

Clara, walking with great purpose, is going to the library. She's keeping an eye out as she does so. For what, she's not exactly sure.

(She had a dream last night-- because that seems to be the only thing that can force her to make decisions lately, but she doesn't want to think about that. She had a dream.

It's a dream about coming home.

It's the end of that quest-- the one she's dreamed about since the beginning with Lynet and Lyonors and all that nonsense. But in this dream it's finally over and he's coming home. And his brothers are with him and he rides in the midst of them, not a pace behind like with Lancelot. And they come home, to Camelot, and King Arthur is there and even though Gareth has seen him before, it was like seeing him for the first time. He looked then, more than ever, the way Gareth had imagined him from the stories, his famous sword at his hip and his Queen at his side.

And his brothers are there. They don't care that he ran away, that he did not come to them, that he lied. They're there.

It's the first time she wakes up and doesn't feel alone.)

So she's going to the library, because she feels like she has to do something and it's the only lead she really has. And she's keeping an eye out. True, she's been more or less an utter failure at recognizing anyone thus far. But today, maybe, she thinks she could do it.

It's a risk she's taking, walking downtown in the broad daylight with no safeguard but her evident youth. But Morgan has never been noted for her caution, when she's on the trail of something she wants. She has a secure line on Morvydd, and she's feeling confident. If she can make headway with her daughter, then Accolon, Ywain, even Mordred, ought to pose no difficulty.

So she wanders down the street, leisurely, peering into the windows of shops, pausing to read the Historical Interest plaques posted here and there. When she reaches the bakery she lingers, slim and elegant in her black wool coat, to study Of The Lake's unprepossessing façade.

Cecilia has felt so much better since her trip to visit Larry in New York. It had been wonderful - though she still wasn't sure she was ready to admit to being in love. Once home, she found that her days were astonishingly upbeat, even if her dreams had only intensified.

She still has alarmingly vivid, painful nightmares of the end, several times a week, but now she sees other things as well. Sons, her brother, memories of things that would have seemed commonplace, if they hadn't been so loaded for Morgause. Morgause, to whom most everything seemed like a chess piece to be played, something to trade for power or attention. Cecilia wasn't sure what to make of such dreams; they should have disturbed, her, probably, but more and more she found that they seemed normal, natural. That such thinking made a kind of sense.

It made her want to draw those people to her, somehow, in this life. She didn't seem to have any way of doing this; she didn't seem to have any sort of magic, or power that she could tell. So she settled for the next best thing. Against her better judgement, this Sunday morning, she's set herself up at The Round Table - coffee, coffee cake, and a crossword. She's doing her best to present an air of friendly availability.

It's a couple days before New Year's eve. And, just like that, out of the blue, Cecilia's phone rings. A certain musician is calling her from New York City.

Sagramore doesn't get out much, mostly because Jim does a good job of squashing him down and keeping him out of his life. But the recent events with Nathan and the fact that Jim's been exhausted lately have his guard down, and Sagramore is the one who woke up this morning and spent half an hour working out modern plumbing, got his body dressed and headed out into town.

It's Sagramore, and for some people it might be obvious in the way he carries himself, the way his smile is relaxed and easy and his movement has a grace about it that Jim never has, a beautiful deer-like grace. He's exploring the shops that he hasn't ever been in, grinning freely at the lovely and unlovely alike, using the full extent of his charm to make everyone feel like the most special person in the world.

( I'll draw three figures on your heart... )

Gary has really been rocking back and forth a lot over the last few weeks--autumn does not do him any favours from a psychological angle--but he's finally roused himself enough to get out of the house and try to focus, so he's buying more art supplies (you would swear he is trying to keep that store in business single-handedly).

He looks unexpectedly fragile this afternoon, having lost weight again, wrapped in his jacket with his long-fingered artist's hands cold as snow.

He is wondering again whether he will ever be well.

Larry was not a pacer, but he wondered if it would help if he were. Instead, he stood at the window of his apartment, looking out, letting things roll over in his mind. Looking down the street, he could see all leaves gone flame red and the yellow of no. 2 pencils. He had to admit, Britannia was a pretty little town.

It'd be the first place in years he was even a little bit sorry to see the last of.

But as the thought crossed his mind, he knew he'd already made a decision. He was just stalling now. He picked up the phone and sent Cecilia a text.

Pick you up for dinner at seven tonight? It was last minute, he knew, but waiting wasn't going to help anything.

Cecilia loves the start of autumn. Always has. She still feels like it's the true beginning of the year, even though she hasn't been in school in years. And this time around, it seems particularly sharp - fresh, even.

Since her last conversation with Nathan, she's felt energized. A strength welling up in her, a conviction born of knowing just who she is, who she always has been. The surety of knowing what should be hers, and what might be if they all get it right this time.

This morning, she's sitting outside Habitat with a cup of coffee, wrapped in a cozy scarf. For once, she doesn't have her nose buried in a book. She's just people watching, thinking, breathing in the autumn air.